it. I happen to overhear you two talking, and I get the idea you killed Paul. I walk in on you
and Farrar pulls a gun. I beat him to the draw. I’m pretty quick with a rod, and Hame knows
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it. You pull a gun, too. So you both get shot. I then put a proposition up to Hame. He gets a
slice from the casino if he takes care of me. He might even be persuaded to toss Itta and Zoe
in the can until I get things organized. There’d be no difficulty in making a charge against
them. Then by the time Ricca’s got over his drinking jag - oh, yes, Hollenheimer told me
about that - it’d be too late for him to start trouble. How do you like it?”
“You wouldn’t want to cut Hame in,” Della said, and shifted forward. “He’d take the lot in
time. He’s like that, and you know it.”
Reisner gnawed at his lower lip, his eyes thoughtful. “Maybe,” he said, “but it’s a way out
of this mess.” “There’s another way,” Della said softly. “What’s that?”
She turned to look at me. The expression in her eyes set my heart pounding.
“We could kill you, Nick. That’d be the best way. We were talking about it when you came
in.”
Reisner continued to smile, but his eyes turned to ice.
“Yeah, I heard you. That’s why I like my idea, and that’s why it’s going to be my idea.”
“Not with the safety-catch on, Nick.”
It was well done. Even I looked at the gun. Reisner’s eyes shifted from us and looked
down. Della threw the cushion she had been grasping in one swift, violent movement. It
caught Reisner in the face. She flung herself off the bed and clamped her hands on his hand
and the gun, wedging her finger against the trigger so he couldn’t fire.
I jumped from my chair as Reisner, swearing softly, staggered to his feet, his fist raised to
club Della as she hung with all her weight on his gun arm.
I hit him on the side of his face with a long, looping right that exploded on his cheek-bone
with the impact of a steam-hammer. He wasn’t built for a punch like that. I felt the bone
splinter as he shot backwards, dragging her with him. He cannoned into the wall, bounced
away and began to sag as I stepped up close and smashed a right to his jaw. He went down,
his face coming squarely on a big glass bowl of floating dahlia heads that stood on a table.
The bowl flew into fragments, and the table smashed like matchwood. Water and flowers
scattered over Della and the carpet.
She screamed as the water hit her, but she didn’t let go of the gun until I grabbed her wrist
and pulled her to her feet.
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We stood side by side, looking down at Reisner. He had rolled over on his back. A long
splinter of glass from the broken bowl, like a tiny dagger, had gone deep into his right eye.
His lips were drawn back from his teeth in a snarl of pain and fear, and his right cheek was a
pulp of splintered bone, teeth and blood. He looked terrible.
Della drew closer to me. I could hear her breathing: quick, short gasps, rasping in a dry
throat.
Neither of us moved. We just stared down at him.
He was dead.
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PART FOUR
FADE-IN
I
IT was like a movie-projector operating inside my head, throwing images of the
past on to the white screen that was my mind. I saw again the room and Della in her blue
wrap that hung open to show her long, slender legs and the beauty of her body. I saw myself
with blood out of my face, my fists clenched, and a sick feeling deep inside me, knowing I
